The joints that ache and burn cry out with a pain that is indeed grievous, and the desire to be free of bodily inflammation is natural. Yet I must speak plainly, for the physician of souls is often compelled to give pain in order to bring about true healing. This bodily suffering is a fire, a kind of outward burning, but consider how much more wretched is the soul that is on fire with inflammations of other kinds and feels no pain at all.
When the body lies like a dropsical patient, swollen and unable to take what is truly good, it is a merciful warning. For God oftentimes punishes the body for the transgressions of the soul, so that by the scourging of this inferior part, the better part may receive healing. Think of the paralytic whom the Lord healed, afterward finding him and saying, “Behold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” A fearful thing is sin, fearful and the ruin of the soul, and the mischief often overflows and attacks the body. What is this inflammation in your limbs if not a loud, merciful voice calling you away from the far more terrible fever that none can quench? For what is more delightful than to be told of the bitter reality of such dangers, when the telling itself keeps off that bitter reality?
Therefore do not merely seek the relief of the body, as if it were the chief evil. Let your very pain pierce your heart and brace up your soul. I know this word galls you, but what can I do? It is not possible that such eager desire and suffering should fail of its fruit, if you let the medicine do its work. These pains are but the applying of an external cautery for a deep, internal dropsy of pride or surfeiting of the world. The one who is a spiritual physician is to be admired over the one who is merely a puffed-up, inflamed, and ridiculous child.
Yet there is solid hope. Even one who has seemed insensible to many remedies may, by a single blow of affliction, be brought down and converted all at once, showing abundant fruit. Let this fiery trial not be wasted; let it become a cure. The lust for earthly comfort, like an extravagant monster, only increases the soul’s distemper. The true health is found in a life of giving thanks, in philosophy of sufficiency, in a soul brilliant and ornamented, not with pride, but with the humility that releases the burning fever. So groan in your body, but let your soul rise up and become sound in health, fervent in zeal, no longer dull of hearing. May we all, having been made whole, sin no more lest a worse thing befall us, and instead obtain an everlasting restoration where there is no inflammation, only brightness.